So last class was on the Awakening Heart and what we call the Brahma Vaharas. Brahma

Vaharas for those that are new, it's another word for the divine abode or the home

that is within each of us and is our true nature that we experience and there's

different flavors of it and when the first flavor we explored was loving

kindness or loving presence and the second flavor we explored was compassion.

Now love is what arises when we wake up and see the goodness and the beauty and

that's a quality of appreciation and care that comes from seeing the truth of what's

here. Compassion is the quality of love that emerges when we see the suffering that's

here, another part of truth and that our hearts get really tender.

Tonight we are going to be exploring the third of the Brahma Vaharas which is joy and joy

is really, with the way I understand it, it's really a quality of love for life that

arises when we open to that space and it includes the 10,000-joice and sorrows, that which

is beautiful, that which is difficult. It's a quality of profound openness that itself

is an expression of freedom. Now I've shared that on my way to giving a talk for the

week that I know I'm giving a talk. The talk theme provides a filter so I knew that okay,

my filter right now is joy and I want to confess that I had a bit of weariness about it

because right now my life has been really dense. It's very demanding and busy and stressful

and so I kind of have locked in a little bit of a kind of a grim, you know, get through

the day kind of mentality so okay, joy. So part of what I'll be sharing a little bit

is how did this filter work out for me this week and I will share also that I had a little

helper and our family has adopted now two new dogs and one of them I've really gotten

to know over these last weeks. Her name is Katie and she's this little bundle of swadda

...